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Comment by jaxn | Hacker News Reader

I don't think users actually do this anyway.

I am running a twitter poll on how many web apps people have saved to their iPhone: http://twtpoll.com/r/g3bnth

I have a pretty techy following and this just doesn't seem to be done with any regularity. Maybe half of the people have saved at least one web app, but how many native apps have they installed.

I think this tells us two things:

1) saving a web app doesn't really make it any better than just using that web app in mobile safari.

2) apple has little incentive to prioritize the testing and developing of this feature since so few people actually use it.

Seems like a non-issue to me.

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This effects UIWebView which web apps, technically called web clips just so happen to use.

However many normal apps use UIWebView to display HTML content. Any app you use the jumps to a web page but stays in the app definitely does, some apps you might not even know you're using HTML UI instead of Cocoa, the integration is pretty tight, sometimes it simply easier to make parts of your UI in HTML and embed as a resource and just point UIWebView to it.

So yes users use it all the time, but usually as part of a real app.

Ahhh, I miseed the part about this affecting all UIWebView.

Though doesn't that really lend credence to the idea that this was an oversight and not an intentional slight at web apps?

> I don't think users actually do this anyway.

Ordinary users may not do this (yet?); but I develop webapps for companies (to be used internally) where we have users add the app to the home screen (or we do it for them). Once this is done, they don't know the difference between a native app and our webapp.

For non-technical users it would be quite complex to launch Safari and select a bookmark to operate an "application".

Some mobile web app "stores", like http://openappmkt.com/ , provide all the JS and HTML to force users to install the app to the homescreen first, in the interest of preserving their user experience.

Try installing an app that is based on OpenAppMkt like http://khanapp.com and notice that it asks you nicely to add it first to the home screen before running.

As an iOS web developer you can use the navigator.standalone JS var to detect if the app is running straight from the home screen, and ask the user nicely to install it if they haven't done so.

Why would you prefer users to do this? Because it removes the location bar chrome, which can result in a near-seamless fullscreen interface that more closely resembles a native app.

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